Re:What a tangled web we weave...
on
RMS Responds
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· Score: 1
How is not being allowed to use GPL software in your propietary software nebulous? Derivative work is pretty clear cut. If you cut and paste the code, #include it, link with it, make a modification, etc. In other words, if something contains GPL code, that something is GPL as well. How can you complain about the GPL when you are writing software that is far more restricted? You can't use other peoples proprietary code in your projects, you can't use GPL code either. Is the GPL somehow worse than what you are doing. The GPL makes software less useful in the construction of new propietary software. At least you can look at the code and learn how it works, even if you can't cut and paste it. This negative impact on you is no accident, it is the whole point of the GPL. Considering that you want to use GPL code in making even more restricted code, how do you have a moral argument against the GPL? You have a pragmatic argument, your proprietary projects would be easier if you could use GPL code in them. Well I could achieve my goal of world domination more easily by enslaving you and your family, but my selfish interests don't cause me to deserve more.
You can be a selfish bastard and write propietary software, that really isn't all THAT big of a crime, unless you are Microsoft. But in doing so you accept the idea that you can utterly control your work, and so you have no moral argument against others doing the same.
Re:What a tangled web we weave...
on
RMS Responds
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· Score: 1
Your argument for the freedom to place software under a restrictive license is based on the idea that copyright is a right. This is the fundamental issue. RMS believes that copyright does harm by sometimes forcing us to use software that has unacceptable restrictions. If you consider copyright to be a mild form of extortion and enslavement, then saying it isn't free because you can't make a propietary version of it is like saying you aren't a free man because you aren't allowed to get rich stealing peoples kidney's, leaving them in a cold bathtub. Your point seems to be that propietary software infringes on no freedoms, because it is your choice to use the software. If you don't like the terms, you don't have to use it, and if you become enslaved by the software, it is your own choice. According to that logic, as copyrighting software does no harm, it is a freedom you ought to have, and denying you that freedom makes the GPL unfree. Well, if using software was always completely voluntary, I don't think anyone would have a problem with even the most restrictive propietary licenses. The problem is that we are coerced into using sofware. Of course you could choose not to use computers, go live in the woods hunting rabbits. It's like saying if you don't like cars, don't drive them. To live a normal life, you must drive a car. To live a normal life, you must use computer software. When there is no free alternative, the choice is to go do something completely different with your life, unrelated to computers, or use the restrive software. True it is your choice. Consider the following situation. Due to circumstances beyond your control, you are desperately poor. A tempting way to get some money to eat might be to gamble. You have no money, so you put your freedom up. You lose, and become a slave. Entirely voluntary, therefore the slave owner did nothing wrong. In many circumstances, we are lead to use software, even though we can't stand the license. In this case the propietary software is restricting my freedom, and the alternative, to not use the software and live in the woods with a shotgun, is not reasonable. The copyright therefore infringes on my freedom. Since the author's freedom to copyright is interfering with my freedoms, the author must lose the right to copyright, for the users' right to do what he wants on his own equipment comes before an author's right to control all copies of his work.
The issue we seem to disagree on is whether or not restrictive licenses violate the rights of the user. If you accept that they do, then the GPL is not restrictive any more than laws on extortion are restrictive, and is therefore completely and utterly free. If you think that the author's right to control his work comes first, then the GPL is not very free at all.
RMS's wording is completely valid within his framework of beliefs. Just because your definition of freedom is different from what he honestly believes does not make him deceptive. There is nothing wrong with thinking the freedoms the GPL removes are valid, and therefore the GPL is not free. My problem is with Tom calling RMS a decietful user of newspeak, and the FSF not at all being about freedom. Tom's language is offensive and rude to anyone who agrees with RMS. You don't have to call the GPL free if you don't believe it is, but the issue is not so clear cut that RMS cannot call it free if that is his belief.
Re:What a tangled web we weave...
on
RMS Responds
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· Score: 1
ok so my wording wasn't clear. If you choose to be a slave you aren't really a slave. Just a volunteer. If the freed man wants his freedom, he would still be free even if he can't own slaves himself. If no one is allowed to own slaves, then there is no longer a choice to be a slave, as for you to be a slave someone else must be a slave owner. So it really is the same thing. If you choose to do something, it isn't against your will. The against your will part is the key. To preserve our freedom we prohibit slave owning. Nowadays few would complain that this means we are no longer free, since we don't have that particular freedom. Same with free software. The lack of the freedom to enslave software does not mean the software isn't free.
That's what copyrights are, enslavement of code. It certainly isn't nearly as horrible as enslaving a person, but the point still holds that it is not deceptive to call GPL software free.
Re:What a tangled web we weave...
on
RMS Responds
·
· Score: 1
I don't understand why you think these things are dishonest or deceptive. Of course GNU isn't unix, it is a unix CLONE. since unix is a registered trademark unix is only what the trademark owners call unix. It isn't RMS's fault that the trademark law works this way.
More importantly is how you insist that GPL software is not free. You say it is not gratis. That is technically true, but no one claims it is. When we say the united states is a free country we don't mean you don't have to pay taxes. But GPl software effectively is gratis, since it can be downloaded free of charge, or bought on cd for the price of the physical media.
GPL software is most certainly libre. Would you say it is deceptive to call someone a "free man" if he no longer has the freedom to be taken as a slave? GPL gives you the freedom to use, modify, and distribute software in whatever way you like, with one exception. The exception being the GPL software, and anything derived from it is also under these terms. True, you are not free to make proprietary extensions, but that is entirely necessary if we want to preserve the other freedoms. Do you say you aren't free because you can't kill people or take them as slaves? While in one sense you are less free for not being able to legally do these things, you really are far more free when you can live without fear of being taken slave or killed.
There can be no freedom without property, as you say, but you are mixing physical with intellectual property. If you accept that ideas are not property, then the freedom to write propietary extensions is like the freedom to enslave and torture children. To preserve more important freedoms, this one freedom must be given up.
Re:Honest questions...
on
RMS Responds
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· Score: 1
There are two issues here, the moral and the practical. How is it immoral for you to tell that company not to copy your software? Their computers are their physical property, you have no right to tell them what to do with their own computers. Especially when copying the software could help many more people. Your argument for this restriction being reasonable is that you wouldn't have written the software, or at least you wouldn't have given any copies to them, if not for the agreement not to copy. Well, that is irrelevant and circular thinking. maybe you wouldn't have written your software if everybody could copy it freely. That doesn't change the fact that you DID write it. Once it's written it is the rights of all people to use it, assuming they don't claim to have written it themselves. Asking for royalties is extortion. The act of copying has nothing to do with you, any royalties should be voluntary, and thought of as donations.
The other issue is practical. Without the monopoly on reproduction, one business model for making money off of writing software could fail. If there is no other way to reward programmers, MAYBE it is a good idea to restrict freedom in return for more software. This is purely pragmatic, however, no morals involved. On the other hand, with free software, you don't need to keep writing the same thing over and over again, so programmers spend time on new software, meaning software advances much faster.
Here is a hypothetical situation that I feel is how the current situation with software is. If you truly understand the issue of software copying, you will understand that most of the situations where 'piracy' occurs is not immoral. Hershey's and Monsanto merge and create a new kind of plant. a chocolate bar plant. You plant the seed, and soon a fully processed and packaged, delicious hershey bar grows out of the ground. as HersheySanto did the work to create it, it is their decision to copyright the plant and collect royalties. if it wasn't for the potential profit, they never would have made it, so they have kind of moral right to ask for money if you want to eat the chocolate. by the nature of plants, the chocolate plant spreads across the planet. soon it is growing in everyones yard, like another weed. there is nothing wrong with MonsHershey asking for you to pay a small royaltie for every chocolate bar plant you eat. And certainly, if you go into business, and get rich off of the chocolate plants, you owe HersheySanto a SMALL portion of your profits. However, there are many cases when it would not be immoral to eat the chocolate bar without paying. You could eat one to see if you like it, if you like it, you would have more of an obligation to pay for any future chocolate plants you eat. The other, more debatable situation is when you truly can't afford it. True, you don't need chocolate bars. you can live a happy, full life without them. Say there is a poor family. they own a small house and the bit of land around it, and they can buy enough food to live, but not enough for any luxuries whatsoever. They definitely can't afford chocolate bar plant royalties. What does anybody possibly have to gain by denying these people the choclate growing in their own yard? there are no potential profits lost. MonsantoHershey stays in business just as well, if not better (for the marketing exposure), then if that poor family just did without. Another example, poor college student, majoring in chocolate engineering, wants to study actual chocolate plants up close to learn how they work. True, he doesn't have a 'right' to learn about chocolate. Nevertheless, society would only be improved if he WERE to 'steal' a chocolate plant off public property and study it. If he has any money he ought to give a LITTLE to MonsanShey, but no one is being hurt, wronged, or deprived if he is unable to pay. Yes, if everybody did this they would go out of business and we would have no new chocolate from them. It would not be good for society if nobody paid. But for exceptions such as these, the right thing to do is 'pirate' chocolate.
Copying software is not stealing. it is failing to reward. a reward that the creator is legally, and possibly morally entitled to. speaking in a purely pragmatic utilitarian sense, the world would be best off if people with money paid, and those without used it anyway. Amazingly, thats the way it is today. The problem is it isn't legal. Copyright laws don't even need to be repealed, licensing practices just need to be reformed. Like sun is doing, most any software should be available for 10 dollars, assuming you meet the requirements. big business can and should pay high prices to support creators. This does not address the issue of free as in speech software being better because you can fork the development and freely modify for your own personal use. That really is a separate issue. software would still be free if you couldn't use it for LARGE business without paying royalties.
the crime in this case is copyrighting his derivative work. the gpl allows him to do absolutely anything he wants with apache, linux, and samba, as long as the result is gpl'd as well. the gpl would be unnecessary if copyrights didn't exist.
you must understand that violating a copyright is failing to reward, which is different than punishing. if anything should be proprietary, it is not drivers. 4front should not be rewarded for the stupidity of sound card manufacturers. by the way, are you aware that 4front gives free licenses to developers? I have an unpaid yet legal OSS license, in my name, because I am working on a free software project which uses open sound system. if gateway sold me a computer without a power cable, then it would be right to steal one from the local gateway country store. if gateway, out of stupidity, refused to sell power cables, then it may still not be right to steal a cable from compusa, but there would be nothing wrong with violating compusa's patent on power cables to build your own, which is what copying oss is.
That would be pretending to have written something that you actually haven't. That is fraud, and is most certainly wrong. It is always allowed to have quotations and information that you copied from somewhere else as long as you mention the original source. When you copy a game, you aren't claiming to be the author.
Of course you are entitled to enjoy the fruits of your labor. However, if the fruits of your labor can easily be enjoyed by others, without any additional work on your part, then you have no right to tell them not to enjoy those fruits, just because you are the one who does the work. If I think up a funny joke, and tell it to some friends, or even do a stand up show where people come and pay to hear the joke, it is none of my business if they want to retell that joke to their friends, as long as they don't claim to be that joke's originator. Anything else is extortion. If i copy some software, i did the work of copying. True, it was not much work, and the creation of the sofware in the first place was most likely a great deal of work, but as the developer is not providing me with any services, he has no right to extort money for some imaginary debt I owe him. You can't truly believe in property rights if you believe in intellectual property rights. I did the work to earn money for my hard drive. I did the work to earn the money for buying the disk the software came in. No one disputes that if I buy software at a store I own the physical media it came on. As both the original cdrom and the hard drive are my undisputed personal private property, it is my business and my business alone if I want to make full use of this property, including making copies and distributing them. By saying I can't put my cdrom burner into full use by opening up a small software publishing company, you are depriving me of MY fundamental human rights. I am harming no one, using only my property. It is true that developers ought to be paid for their work, but paying for software is not the same thing as paying for work. If a carpenter builds a house with an innovative new design, and he invites people over to take a look at it, someone may or may not buy it. If instead of buying it someone decides to build their own house with a design like yours instead of simply buying yours, that is too bad for you, but you have not been harmed or wronged. if you never sell the house you will have learned your lesson, and next time you will not put the work into building it until somebody is there to pay you to build it specifically for them. No one is forcing programmers to write software. If they can't make money selling something that has no scarcity, as you of course can't, they ought to find a business model that does work, instead of violating the rights of the entire world.
You misunderstand. the linux community will find you distasteful if you try to make money, like redhat. the quickest way to get readers of slashdot to hate you is to release your source code, pretending to be friendly to the community, but actually the code is still propietary. the way to make the linux community love you is to make high quality truly free software. whether or not you happen to make money at the same time isn't much of an issue. the only reason redhat is hated is because they attempt to use marketing power to negatively influence standards.
Sure, you may make intellectual property. More likely you steal it from employees or secretly from a gpl'd program. But you certainly do not trade. You 'trade' ungodly amounts of money for the priviledge of letting them use a copy of the program on their hardware. In short, you have gained money, but given away nothing. If you were really trading you would hand over all rights to the program instead of merely the right to use a copy. Obviously that would be idiotic, thousands of people could benefit from the one program, why make a new one each time? Well, if you aren't giving something you shouldn't expect money in return. Yes, i know there are costs involved in the box, manuals, and cd's, but that isn't near the price of software. So you would say, how about the price of developing the software? Well, since people can choose to ignore the laws, this kind of law isn't really enforceable when done privately in ones own home. Therefore, when you create intellectual property, it is owned by everyone, you only created it.
Maybe you need to read the GPL. it sounds to me like you don't believe in it. If you don't, you are obviously a corporate pig and have nothing to gain, but plenty to hurt, by being on slashdot. You say it is bad to be raped of your ideas. I agree completely. But patents are all about government protection for raping of ideas. In the course of developing a piece of software, I come up with an algorithm. If I didn't have to invent a new algorithm, then I could just buy another program that implements that. UNfortunately, any aspect of my program has the possibility of being owned by someone else, even though I created it. The patent owner got the patent office first. That doesn't mean they invented it, or they should have the right to rape everyone else in the entire world of this invention. In short, go shoot yourself, you are a pimple on the otherwise freedom-fighting slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
How is not being allowed to use GPL software in your propietary software nebulous? Derivative work is pretty clear cut. If you cut and paste the code, #include it, link with it, make a modification, etc. In other words, if something contains GPL code, that something is GPL as well.
How can you complain about the GPL when you are writing software that is far more restricted? You can't use other peoples proprietary code in your projects, you can't use GPL code either. Is the GPL somehow worse than what you are doing. The GPL makes software less useful in the construction of new propietary software. At least you can look at the code and learn how it works, even if you can't cut and paste it. This negative impact on you is no accident, it is the whole point of the GPL. Considering that you want to use GPL code in making even more restricted code, how do you have a moral argument against the GPL? You have a pragmatic argument, your proprietary projects would be easier if you could use GPL code in them. Well I could achieve my goal of world domination more easily by enslaving you and your family, but my selfish interests don't cause me to deserve more.
You can be a selfish bastard and write propietary software, that really isn't all THAT big of a crime, unless you are Microsoft. But in doing so you accept the idea that you can utterly control your work, and so you have no moral argument against others doing the same.
Your argument for the freedom to place software under a restrictive license is based on the idea that copyright is a right. This is the fundamental issue. RMS believes that copyright does harm by sometimes forcing us to use software that has unacceptable restrictions. If you consider copyright to be a mild form of extortion and enslavement, then saying it isn't free because you can't make a propietary version of it is like saying you aren't a free man because you aren't allowed to get rich stealing peoples kidney's, leaving them in a cold bathtub.
Your point seems to be that propietary software infringes on no freedoms, because it is your choice to use the software. If you don't like the terms, you don't have to use it, and if you become enslaved by the software, it is your own choice. According to that logic, as copyrighting software does no harm, it is a freedom you ought to have, and denying you that freedom makes the GPL unfree.
Well, if using software was always completely voluntary, I don't think anyone would have a problem with even the most restrictive propietary licenses. The problem is that we are coerced into using sofware. Of course you could choose not to use computers, go live in the woods hunting rabbits. It's like saying if you don't like cars, don't drive them. To live a normal life, you must drive a car. To live a normal life, you must use computer software. When there is no free alternative, the choice is to go do something completely different with your life, unrelated to computers, or use the restrive software. True it is your choice.
Consider the following situation. Due to circumstances beyond your control, you are desperately poor. A tempting way to get some money to eat might be to gamble. You have no money, so you put your freedom up. You lose, and become a slave. Entirely voluntary, therefore the slave owner did nothing wrong.
In many circumstances, we are lead to use software, even though we can't stand the license. In this case the propietary software is restricting my freedom, and the alternative, to not use the software and live in the woods with a shotgun, is not reasonable. The copyright therefore infringes on my freedom. Since the author's freedom to copyright is interfering with my freedoms, the author must lose the right to copyright, for the users' right to do what he wants on his own equipment comes before an author's right to control all copies of his work.
The issue we seem to disagree on is whether or not restrictive licenses violate the rights of the user. If you accept that they do, then the GPL is not restrictive any more than laws on extortion are restrictive, and is therefore completely and utterly free. If you think that the author's right to control his work comes first, then the GPL is not very free at all.
RMS's wording is completely valid within his framework of beliefs. Just because your definition of freedom is different from what he honestly believes does not make him deceptive. There is nothing wrong with thinking the freedoms the GPL removes are valid, and therefore the GPL is not free. My problem is with Tom calling RMS a decietful user of newspeak, and the FSF not at all being about freedom. Tom's language is offensive and rude to anyone who agrees with RMS.
You don't have to call the GPL free if you don't believe it is, but the issue is not so clear cut that RMS cannot call it free if that is his belief.
ok so my wording wasn't clear. If you choose to be a slave you aren't really a slave. Just a volunteer. If the freed man wants his freedom, he would still be free even if he can't own slaves himself. If no one is allowed to own slaves, then there is no longer a choice to be a slave, as for you to be a slave someone else must be a slave owner. So it really is the same thing. If you choose to do something, it isn't against your will. The against your will part is the key.
To preserve our freedom we prohibit slave owning. Nowadays few would complain that this means we are no longer free, since we don't have that particular freedom. Same with free software. The lack of the freedom to enslave software does not mean the software isn't free.
That's what copyrights are, enslavement of code. It certainly isn't nearly as horrible as enslaving a person, but the point still holds that it is not deceptive to call GPL software free.
I don't understand why you think these things are dishonest or deceptive.
Of course GNU isn't unix, it is a unix CLONE. since unix is a registered trademark unix is only what the trademark owners call unix. It isn't RMS's fault that the trademark law works this way.
More importantly is how you insist that GPL software is not free. You say it is not gratis. That is technically true, but no one claims it is. When we say the united states is a free country we don't mean you don't have to pay taxes. But GPl software effectively is gratis, since it can be downloaded free of charge, or bought on cd for the price of the physical media.
GPL software is most certainly libre. Would you say it is deceptive to call someone a "free man" if he no longer has the freedom to be taken as a slave? GPL gives you the freedom to use, modify, and distribute software in whatever way you like, with one exception. The exception being the GPL software, and anything derived from it is also under these terms. True, you are not free to make proprietary extensions, but that is entirely necessary if we want to preserve the other freedoms. Do you say you aren't free because you can't kill people or take them as slaves? While in one sense you are less free for not being able to legally do these things, you really are far more free when you can live without fear of being taken slave or killed.
There can be no freedom without property, as you say, but you are mixing physical with intellectual property. If you accept that ideas are not property, then the freedom to write propietary extensions is like the freedom to enslave and torture children. To preserve more important freedoms, this one freedom must be given up.
There are two issues here, the moral and the practical.
How is it immoral for you to tell that company not to copy your software? Their computers are their physical property, you have no right to tell them what to do with their own computers. Especially when copying the software could help many more people.
Your argument for this restriction being reasonable is that you wouldn't have written the software, or at least you wouldn't have given any copies to them, if not for the agreement not to copy. Well, that is irrelevant and circular thinking. maybe you wouldn't have written your software if everybody could copy it freely. That doesn't change the fact that you DID write it. Once it's written it is the rights of all people to use it, assuming they don't claim to have written it themselves. Asking for royalties is extortion. The act of copying has nothing to do with you, any royalties should be voluntary, and thought of as donations.
The other issue is practical. Without the monopoly on reproduction, one business model for making money off of writing software could fail. If there is no other way to reward programmers, MAYBE it is a good idea to restrict freedom in return for more software. This is purely pragmatic, however, no morals involved. On the other hand, with free software, you don't need to keep writing the same thing over and over again, so programmers spend time on new software, meaning software advances much faster.
Here is a hypothetical situation that I feel is how the current situation with software is. If you truly understand the issue of software copying, you will understand that most of the situations where 'piracy' occurs is not immoral.
Hershey's and Monsanto merge and create a new kind of plant. a chocolate bar plant. You plant the seed, and soon a fully processed and packaged, delicious hershey bar grows out of the ground. as HersheySanto did the work to create it, it is their decision to copyright the plant and collect royalties. if it wasn't for the potential profit, they never would have made it, so they have kind of moral right to ask for money if you want to eat the chocolate. by the nature of plants, the chocolate plant spreads across the planet. soon it is growing in everyones yard, like another weed. there is nothing wrong with MonsHershey asking for you to pay a small royaltie for every chocolate bar plant you eat. And certainly, if you go into business, and get rich off of the chocolate plants, you owe HersheySanto a SMALL portion of your profits. However, there are many cases when it would not be immoral to eat the chocolate bar without paying. You could eat one to see if you like it, if you like it, you would have more of an
obligation to pay for any future chocolate plants you eat. The other, more debatable situation is when you truly can't afford it. True, you don't need chocolate bars. you can live a happy, full life without them. Say there is a poor family. they own a small house and the bit of land around it, and they can buy enough food to live, but not enough for any luxuries whatsoever. They definitely can't afford chocolate bar plant royalties. What does anybody possibly have to gain by denying these people the choclate growing in their own yard? there are no potential profits lost. MonsantoHershey stays in business just as well, if not better (for the marketing exposure), then if that poor family just did without.
Another example, poor college student, majoring in chocolate engineering, wants to study actual chocolate plants up close to learn how they work. True, he doesn't have a 'right' to learn about chocolate. Nevertheless, society would only be improved if he WERE to 'steal' a chocolate plant off public property and study it. If he has any money he ought to give a LITTLE to MonsanShey, but no one is being hurt, wronged, or deprived if he is unable to pay. Yes, if everybody did this they would go out of business and we would have no new chocolate from them. It would not be good for society if nobody paid. But for exceptions such as these, the right thing to do is 'pirate' chocolate.
Copying software is not stealing. it is failing to reward. a reward that the creator is legally, and possibly morally entitled to. speaking in a purely pragmatic utilitarian sense, the world would be best off if people with money paid, and those without used it anyway. Amazingly, thats the way it is today. The problem is it isn't legal. Copyright laws don't even need to be repealed, licensing practices just need to be reformed. Like sun is doing, most any software should be available for 10 dollars, assuming you meet the requirements. big business can and should pay high prices to support creators.
This does not address the issue of free as in speech software being better because you can fork the development and freely modify for your own personal use. That really is a separate issue. software would still be free if you couldn't use it for LARGE business without paying royalties.
the crime in this case is copyrighting his
derivative work. the gpl allows him to do absolutely anything he wants with apache, linux, and samba, as long as the result is gpl'd as well. the gpl would be unnecessary if copyrights didn't exist.
you must understand that violating a copyright
is failing to reward, which is different than
punishing. if anything should be proprietary, it is not drivers. 4front should not be rewarded for the stupidity of sound card manufacturers. by the way, are you aware that 4front gives free licenses to developers? I have an unpaid yet legal OSS license, in my name, because I am working on a free software project which uses open sound system.
if gateway sold me a computer without a power cable, then it would be right to steal one from the local gateway country store. if gateway, out of stupidity, refused to sell power cables, then it may still not be right to steal a cable from compusa, but there would be nothing wrong with violating compusa's patent on power cables to build your own, which is what copying oss is.
That would be pretending to have written something that you actually haven't. That is fraud, and is most certainly wrong. It is always allowed to have quotations and information that you copied from somewhere else as long as you mention the original source. When you copy a game, you aren't claiming to be the author.
Of course you are entitled to enjoy the fruits of your labor. However, if the fruits of your labor can easily be enjoyed by others, without any additional work on your part, then you have no right to tell them not to enjoy those fruits, just because you are the one who does the work.
If I think up a funny joke, and tell it to some friends, or even do a stand up show where people come and pay to hear the joke, it is none of my business if they want to retell that joke to their friends, as long as they don't claim to be that joke's originator.
Anything else is extortion. If i copy some software, i did the work of copying. True, it was not much work, and the creation of the sofware in the first place was most likely a great deal of work, but as the developer is not providing me with any services, he has no right to extort money for some imaginary debt I owe him.
You can't truly believe in property rights if you believe in intellectual property rights. I did the work to earn money for my hard drive. I did the work to earn the money for buying the disk the software came in. No one disputes that if I buy software at a store I own the physical media it came on. As both the original cdrom and the hard drive are my undisputed personal private property, it is my business and my business alone if I want to make full use of this property, including making copies and distributing them. By saying I can't put my cdrom burner into full use by opening up a small software publishing company, you are depriving me of MY fundamental human rights. I am harming no one, using only my property. It is true that developers ought to be paid for their work, but paying for software is not the same thing as paying for work. If a carpenter builds a house with an innovative new design, and he invites people over to take a look at it, someone may or may not buy it. If instead of buying it
someone decides to build their own house with a design like yours instead of simply buying yours, that is too bad for you, but you have not been harmed or wronged. if you never sell the house you will have learned your lesson, and next time you will not put the work into building it until somebody is there to pay you to build it specifically for them.
No one is forcing programmers to write software. If they can't make money selling something that has no scarcity, as you of course can't, they ought to find a business model that does work, instead of violating the rights of the entire world.
You misunderstand. the linux community will
find you distasteful if you try to make money,
like redhat. the quickest way to get readers
of slashdot to hate you is to release your source
code, pretending to be friendly to the community,
but actually the code is still propietary.
the way to make the linux community love you is to
make high quality truly free software. whether
or not you happen to make money at the same time isn't much of an issue. the only reason redhat is hated is because they attempt to use marketing power to negatively influence standards.
Sure, you may make intellectual property. More likely you steal it from employees or secretly from a gpl'd program.
But you certainly do not trade. You 'trade' ungodly amounts of money for the priviledge of letting them use a copy of the program on their hardware.
In short, you have gained money, but given away nothing. If you were really trading you would hand over all rights to the program instead of merely the right to use a copy. Obviously that would be idiotic, thousands of people could benefit from the one program, why make a new one each time? Well, if you aren't giving something you shouldn't expect money in return. Yes, i know there are costs involved in the box, manuals, and cd's, but that isn't near the price of software. So you would say, how about the price of developing the software? Well, since people can choose to ignore the laws, this kind of law isn't really enforceable when done privately in ones own home. Therefore, when you create intellectual property, it is owned by everyone, you only created it.
Maybe you need to read the GPL. it sounds to me like you don't believe in it. If you don't, you are obviously a corporate pig and have nothing to gain, but plenty to hurt, by being on slashdot.
You say it is bad to be raped of your ideas. I agree completely. But patents are all about government protection for raping of ideas. In the course of developing a piece of software, I come up with an algorithm. If I didn't have to invent a new algorithm, then I could just buy another program that implements that. UNfortunately, any aspect of my program has the possibility of being owned by someone else, even though I created it. The patent owner got the patent office first. That doesn't mean they invented it, or they should have the right to rape everyone else in the entire world of this invention.
In short, go shoot yourself, you are a pimple on the otherwise freedom-fighting slashdot.